On Firing

[Michael T]

We made the design decision to have regiments determine their own firing targets. This has
confused some players learning the game, who are unsure how to issue firing orders (you don't),
and caused many players to ask us why we made this decision. We feel that the concentration
of fire that would be allowed by permitting the player to micromanage every regiment's firing
orders would be very a-historical. There are some cases in which infantry regiments were
ordered to fire upon enemy units other than the ones that were most threatening before them,
but the record seems to indicate that in almost every case these orders were ignored. Getting
an infantryman to fire on anything but those that were most threatening to him seems to have
been almost an impossibility. This is true to a lesser degree even for artillery, which would
ignore distant infantry in favor of assailing enemy artillery, but only until a certain degree at
which the threat of the infantry proved too menacing. We have tried to model this difficulty of
controlling infantry and artillery fire by removing the absolute targeting decisions from the player
and instead allowing the player's commanders to issue barrage orders to artillery units, and to
designate "combat focus" hexes to attempt to provide some direction to infantry fire. We feel
that this system better reflects the sort of historical semi-control that higher-echelon
commanders had over the firing orders of particular regiments.


I love this aspect of the game. I am so tired of games (like Tillers) that force you micro manage every unit in target selection and fire, over and over every turn. As the commander, I want to manouver my units, not aim and pull the trigger of every gun on the map. So much more time for thought on manouver, less on tedium. And not in the least so much more realistic.

Bravo!

[AlessandroD]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

We made the design decision to have regiments determine their own firing targets. This has
confused some players learning the game, who are unsure how to issue firing orders (you don't),
and caused many players to ask us why we made this decision. We feel that the concentration
of fire that would be allowed by permitting the player to micromanage every regiment's firing
orders would be very a-historical. There are some cases in which infantry regiments were
ordered to fire upon enemy units other than the ones that were most threatening before them,
but the record seems to indicate that in almost every case these orders were ignored. Getting
an infantryman to fire on anything but those that were most threatening to him seems to have
been almost an impossibility. This is true to a lesser degree even for artillery, which would
ignore distant infantry in favor of assailing enemy artillery, but only until a certain degree at
which the threat of the infantry proved too menacing. We have tried to model this difficulty of
controlling infantry and artillery fire by removing the absolute targeting decisions from the player
and instead allowing the player's commanders to issue barrage orders to artillery units, and to
designate "combat focus" hexes to attempt to provide some direction to infantry fire. We feel
that this system better reflects the sort of historical semi-control that higher-echelon
commanders had over the firing orders of particular regiments.


I love this aspect of the game. I am so tired of games (like Tillers) that force you micro manage every unit in target selection and fire, over and over every turn. As the commander, I want to manouver my units, not aim and pull the trigger of every gun on the map. So much more time for thought on manouver, less on tedium. And not in the least so much more realistic.

Bravo!

+1 [&o]

[Ricomise]

I concur with this entirely. One of the best aspects of the game is that I feel like I've maneuvered the troops, but now I have to just sit back and wait for reports of what's going on. That and having the activation failure happen at the end of the turn really give the sense that coordinating a mid-19th Century army was not, shall we say, easy...

[berto]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

I am so tired of games (like Tillers) that force you micro manage every unit in target selection and fire, over and over every turn.

+1

I have played many, many turns in JT's ACW games where the only activity in those turns was a repetitious, tedious, boring, unit by micromanaged unit exchange of artillery (and infantry) fire. I have to ask myself: "This is fun?"

[Duck Doc]

Concur. It is axiomatic that any combat unit will engage a threat when within range unless special circumstances dictate otherwise. All warfare involves maneuver to engage the enemy and the engagement just happens. So glad this is replicated in this game. One of the main reasons I got it.

[ericbabe]

Glad to hear you all like this. I was a little worried that many players wouldn't -- we had some guys sign up for beta testing who quit testing because they didn't like not being able to micromanage their regiment attacks, and for a while I was really fearful that we wouldn't have an audience for this combat mechanic.

[Rosseau]

Think of all the carpal tunnel problems you've saved us. For JT, there is auto defensive fire and I often switch to AI control temporarily to let it do the firing. For some reason, it is more irksome for me on ACW titles than on the PzC and SB stuff.

FPRS (modern) uses the same principle and it's a great design decision.